For me, registering to be a Republican is akin to a Jewish person registering to be a Nazi. Anathema.

Yes... I DID use that equation.

I'll be re-registering - from NAV to Democrat to vote for Steve Novick. Then back again to NAV.

They are all such nutcases, there is really no point.

First of all, when Mapes refers to Blue Oregon, he's referring to the state of Oregon, not the website.

And not to cheapen this stunningly intellectual debate about engaging in a mildly dishonest act just to mess with the GOP, but it is OK to spell out the word Nazi.

We all know what the "N-word" signifies in this American dialect, and it's not Nazi. Referring to the word Nazi as the N-word is just plain silly. And for the life of me, I can't figure out why anyone would think it;s necessary to do so.

My grandfather fled Bohemia in 1938, and I work with a son of Holocaust survivors. Neither of us are afraid to say Nazi. Neither of us are afraid to make comparison's to Nazis.

What he and I both do find offensive is the idea expressed so patronizingly by so many "progressives" that Nazis and the Holocaust were some kind of extreme and special evil perpetrated by one sick man or even a small group of sick men.

What happened in the Holocaust was the result of an entire God-fearing country (with a few notable exceptions) -- much like our own -- being led down that horrible road quite enthusiastically by a sophisticated propaganda machine.

Personally, I found liberalincarnate's "equation" less offensive than Charlie's patronizing and self-righteous reaction to it.

rudy or mccain... libertarian??? rudy is nearly a self-admitted authoritarian and mccain is the one who supports things like climate change legislation, oh yeah, and anything to prolong the iraq war.

That's reasonable.

But from what I've witnessed the past seven years, my guess is that there's a whole lot of people in the GOP (and elsewhere) who, if they were dropped into Germany in the late 1930s, would have fallen right in line and been pretty enthusiastic little Nazis. Fortunately, the Way Back Machine is still broken.

Charlie, I'm usually the one in the room telling people to be nice to Republicans, because the way to move this country forward is through cooperation and mutual respect. That said, there will come a time in this country where one party or the other veers into totalitarian propaganda. The way to fight tyranny is by shining a light on it, so if that's the critique that L.I. is levelling we should discuss it on the merits (in another post, of course), not shut it down as outside the bounds of legitimate debate.

As for this post, I wonder why Mapes puts so much faith in the national polls? My understanding is that those polls often shift radically after the first few states. Most political reporters seem to believe that Hilary's "dominance" in the national polls means very little, given the problems she's having in Iowa.

Did you know:

"Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" are being used by the CIA and have been approved by the President of the United States.

It's the exact same phrase the Gestapo used for it's "enhanced" interrogations. The Gestapo were the Nazi-ist of the Nazis. (Unlike The Pope, who says he was forced to join).

Last time I checked, Bush was a Republican.

So How about that for a legitimate comparison to Nazis?

Now, back to the regularly scheduled programming.

Mapes does say in his original post that he believes this scenario is possible but not likely.

Kari,

I realize this wasn't the original topic, but it's important. I'll try to be brief.

Referring to the Nazi Holocaust as a special kind of evil minimizes and cheapens the complex and many reasons for it.

The PBS special last night about Mark Twain mentioned his battles against the rampant anti-Semitism in the United States during the 1930s. And Germany wasn't the only place in Europe where Jews were viewed as less than fully human.

Let's not pretend the entire responsibility for the Holocaust should be laid at the feet of some bad men in leather jackets. The results were a spectacular kind of "special evil." The reasons those results were possible were not so special. I believe there is a very important distinction here.

It's the difference between thinking that the "special" evil can never happen again, and being vigilant to make sure it doesn't -- something this planet still hasn't been able to completely eliminate, as you so rightly noted.

What happened in the Holocaust was the result of an entire God-fearing country (with a few notable exceptions) -- much like our own -- being led down that horrible road quite enthusiastically by a sophisticated propaganda machine.

Amen to that. How many of these, especially Republican, candidates are willing to betray the Constitution and the principle of separation of church and state to get the religious vote? As for interfering in the GOP vote, democrats and republicans (note the lower case) have enough problems trying to get Democrats and independents to nominate someone less odious than the lesser evil.

ENOUGH ALREADY WITH THE NAZI THREADLINE! Geez, people, c'mon. Post a new blog about the subject if you want to, but in the meantime, stay on point. Pretty please? Cause otherwise it's hard to follow what people are trying to say here about the Mapes blog post (remember---what this thread is REALLY about?).

Okay, I'm breathing better now....had to get that off my chest. I appreciate the original post---for one thing, I hadn't seen Mapes blog before and I now I have it bookmarked. For another, I love the fact that Oregon may actually be relevant in the primaries...even if it's only for the Republican Party. As for switching parties to mess with the other side, it'd take a major coordinated effort to truly affect anything, I think, and I don't see folks doing it. Heck, it's hard enough just to get people to register and vote at all!

but also we have a political system, our Constitution, that provides tremendous roadblocks to the kind of tyranny other nations fall into.

The problems here are (1) for most politicians their oaths to the Constitution are meaningless and (2) the majority of "citizens" don't seem to care.

we also have the advantage of our nation's size and diversity. it makes the nation a pain in the ass to govern at times, but sure makes organizing a decent coup tricky.

Russia was much larger than the United States in 1917, but the communists managed to pull off a very effective coup there. And, according to polls around 75 percent of the people fell for the Bush Administration's snow job on Iraq. The United States may be a large country, but it has loads of credulous people deficient in history and political science. As Mencken famously said, "No one over lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

I like the Nazi talk....after all, the alternative is talking about Mapes' blog and everyone knows thats where the Oregonian posts the "shit they dont want to really cover."

To call the Republicans "Nazis" is to call the Nazis an ordinary and typical sort of badness, when in fact the Nazi Holocaust was a special kind of evil. Don't cheapen it. Don't minimize it.

Note, Kari, that I didn't call them Nazis, I just defended the right of someone else to make that argument without being told it was out of bounds. My point being that in 1930s Germany there were a lot of people who said "Hey, the Nazi party is really evil" and a lot of others who said "Shut up, you're not allowed to say that." So let's not be afraid to analyze the question. (And for the record, my analysis says LiberalIncarnate is wrong.)

What cheapens the Holocaust are those who claim it was a special kind of evil with the unspoken corollary that it can never happen again. In fact, the Nazis started out as just typical evil and were allowed to develop into a special kind of evil because of a confluence of many factors. At least a few of those factors exist in today's America.

This is popular in my hometown in Texas. There you don't have to register with a party - you declare what party you're voting for at the polls.

And now in Texas your right to blog anonymously is better protected.

Vote totals matter, whether an election is decided or not. They are a part of the mix in people deciding where a Party or a State is going. A vote for a Republican by a Democrat (or NAV) who has no intention of voting that way simply messes up the Democratic Party with no possibility of affecting the Republican outcome.

In this election, is there anyone here that isn't satisfied that the R's are making a big enough mess on their own? How exactly could you improve on it? McCain/Clinton might actually save the Republicans from a complete melt down.

If you're real satisfied with the Democratic version of Congress, then make a point of throwing away votes that the big players will count and analyze. There are actual differences between Merkley and Novick, you figure throwing that choice away is reasonable?

I'm sorry, this is one of the five stupidest ideas I've heard this year, the others were all Republican.

oh wait, maybe this is another Republican idea...

Pat Malach writes: Did you know:

"Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" are being used by the CIA and have been approved by the President of the United States.

It's the exact same phrase the Gestapo used for it's "enhanced" interrogations. The Gestapo were the Nazi-ist of the Nazis. (Unlike The Pope, who says he was forced to join).

<h2>Last time I checked, Bush was a Republican.</h2>

Last time I checked, Pelosi was a Democrat.

And she approved of water boarding when she heard of it back in 2002. (Or didn't you get the newsflash?)

Since Pelosi is a Democrat, maybe I can smear ALL Democrats, since one of them (their LEADER) approves of water boarding. Aren't they all just like Nazis?

(But that would be wrong, so you all, please don't infer that ALL Democrats are as evil as Pelosi.)

Nothin' brings 'em out of the woodwork like a good Nazi riff.

Certainly there are many levels of responsibility. When Democrats fail to recognize torture and stand up forcefully against it, they are in part responsible for it because they failed to act. We agree.

But let's be clear here, Democrats are not the ones ordering torture. That would be the Responsibility of this Republican administration and the party that continues to enable it (with few notable exceptions).

Pelosi not only 'failed to recognize torture" but she actively encouraged it, if it would save American lives.

From Lewis Lapham's Notebook in the latest issue of Harper's: "When wealth and the wealthy are valued in the city, virtue and good men are less valued. What is valued is practiced, what is not valued is not practiced." Plato That should be good news for Gordon Smith.

(Though, sadly, matched in kind by a few others - Khmer Rouge, Rwanda, Stalin...)

If you want to cheapen the holocaust that is the way to do it. The holocaust was unique, there is nothing that matches it "in kind".

And just to be clear, many Republicans were Nazi sympathizers in the 1930's as were large elements of the Conservative government lead by Neville Chamberlain in Britain. That is the reason "appeasement" was popular with both of them. But neither one was responsible for the holocaust - that rests entirely on the nation of Germany.

What happened in the Holocaust was the result of an entire God-fearing country (with a few notable exceptions) -- much like our own -- being led down that horrible road quite enthusiastically by a sophisticated propaganda machine.

The idea that Germans were somehow deceived by a "sophisticated propaganda machine" ignores history. The fact it that Hitler took a country that was on its knees in 1931, restored it, put it on its feet economically and had conquered almost all of Europe 10 years later. It doesn't require much propaganda to be acclaimed with that kind of track record.

The fact is the typical German benefited enormously during Nazi rule. That changed with the entry of the United Stated into the war, the bombing of German cities and the defeat at Stalingrad. It was only after they lost the war that Germans decided they were "victims" of propaganda.

Speaking of 'good Germans.'

And just to be clear, many Republicans were Nazi sympathizers in the 1930's as were large elements of the Conservative government lead by Neville Chamberlain in Britain.

I don't believe "large" is justified in this comment, but I believe the author has Neville Chamberlain confused with Lord Halifax.

Instead of switching registrations in Oregon to create a problem for Gordon Smith it would be better to switch to the Democratic Party in San Francisco and help get rid of Nancy Pelosi.

Pat Ryan and Larry,

Maybe this will help you understand how I feel about Democrats' responsibility regarding events of the past seven years.

Ross Williams, I was with ya right up until you said that any and all responsibility falls "entirely on the nation of Germany."

The Lion's share (and then some) for sure. But there were other factors. Those factors allow genocides like the one currently taking place in Darfur while we sit back and do next to nothing.

Pat: The suggestion that the Democrats are spineless is persuasive based on what is available for public consumption through the media, but I'm re-reading a retrospective of Walter Karp's work which advances the opinion that senators and representatives in Congress do the bidding of the oligarchies running their respective parties and that collusion between Democrats and Republicans is a common practice. He and others, notably Ralph Nader, also support the apparently valid analysis that both parties do the bidding of corporations that fund them. So what appears to be spinelessness in politicians is probably more a case of puppets being willingly jerked around by their masters. The fact that Democrats have done nothing to end the war on Iraq is most likely a case of the war faction in the party taking care of their donors from the war industry corporations. Pelosi is probably keeping impeachment off the table because the Democrats owe the Republicans in the senate one for not finding Clinton guilty bringing his impeachment proceedings to an end.

And you're right, Pat, about there being more to the crimes of World War II than Germany's guilt. Historians have traced the origins back to Woodrow Wilson's decision to get into World War I and to the onerous demands for reparations pushed mostly by France and acquiesced to by the United States and Britain.

Since this thread is waaaay off the rails anyways....

...would anybody care to elaborate on the difference between "just typical evil" and "a special kind of evil"?

This seems to be at the cruz of the argument here, the distinction between those two.

Some people seem to be arguing that some of the actions of the Khmer Rouge, Stalin (2,000,000 dead, right?) and others are similar in kind, but not in scale, to the actions of the Nazis (presumably this means the Holocaust, i.e. the concentration camps). Thus, the question here is whether the Khmer Rouge, Stalin et. al. qualify as "a special kind of evil."

In my book, Cheney, Bush and even Huckabee qualify as "just typical evil," along with many of the folks who led Enron, and probably a number of employees of Blackwater as well.

So, definitions, please? And how to recognize the distinction? What's the line by which the question of scale is quantified?

"Since this thread is waaaay off the rails anyways...."

Is that supposed to be some kind of Holocaust joke?

I don't know about levels of evil. I'll leave that to Dante's Inferno.

But with some vigilance and the amount of information that is out there right now (and the nearly world-wide access to it), the world will never see that level of atrocity again. We HAVE come along way since the '40s. Or even the '70s.

But Rawanda was not that long ago. And Darfur is going on right NOW. And while the "numbers" may never get that high again, the idea remains that some people on the planet are viewed as less than fully human. And because of that fact some people will act with malice in a spectacularly "special" kind of evil.

Others, sporting technological advances and a lifestyle that we believe would be the envy of any society that's ever existed on this planet, will sit back and let it happen while nary lifting a finger.

This isn't about numbers or keeping score. Some of the very core reasons that explain why something like The Armenian genocide, or the Holocaust, or Stalin's purges, Or the Khmer Rouge can happen, are still present.

What justifies apathy when faced with preventable horror?

Maybe in between programming our I-pods we can figure out that one.

Just to be clear, I certainly don't think George W. Bush and his Republican Igors compare to what the Nazis did to the Jews.

This thread will back me up on that. But I did make a specific comparison, in which the Bush Administration is recycling Gestapo propaganda in its discussions about torture.

And that "special" evil that leads to genocide of any level is still alive on this planet today, no matter how constrained it is or far removed from our consciousness we make it.

What justifies apathy when faced with preventable horror?

Apathy is a consequence people trying to do what is right and necessary and coming up against stonewalling by or indifference from politicians whether they are at the national, state or local level and a failure of their fellow citizens to support those who would try to facilitate change. Most politicians recognize the effectiveness of these tactics and make it a part of their modus operandum. This helps to explain why we only have around a 50 percent turnout or less at elections.

But, dead serious here, I agree that there are "levels of evil".

Evil is evil. The difference between acts of evil is in the scale of barbarism or cruelty.

Lord Halifax? I think someone needs to refresh their history. The Prime Minister of Britain and leader of the Conservative party was Neville Chamberlain. Hitler's sympathizers included the former King, aka the Prince of Wales, and a large number of others including Lord Halifax. The fact is that many people in the British government saw Hitler as a bulwark against the spread of communism and supported him for that reason. Only Hitler's deal with Stalin before the invasion of Poland changed that.

Some of the very core reasons that explain why something like The Armenian genocide, or the Holocaust, or Stalin's purges, Or the Khmer Rouge can happen, are still present.

Why does the extermination of the Native Americans in the United States get left off this list?

There are a number of differences with the holocaust. The entire power of the nation of Germany was dedicated to exterminating Jews wherever they were found. French Jews were not being shipped off to make room for Germans, to provide labor or because they were political threats to the Nazi's. Although the Germans certainly did that with many people in eastern europe. The jews were being exterminated because they had jewish ancestry. Even Jews who had renounced their heritage and converted to Christianity were gassed. I believe the same was true of Gypsies. Not only was this not a "necessity of war", it was often done at the expense of real necessities of war.

This was really something new and unique in human history. Unfortunately, slaughtering whole populations to take their resources and land, or because they are viewed as a political/military threat, is not. Which is why our own slaughter of Native Americans is never listed in the litany with the other genocides. We understand the motives of our settlers all too well.

Lord Halifax? I think someone needs to refresh their history. The Prime Minister of Britain and leader of the Conservative party was Neville Chamberlain. Hitler's sympathizers included the former King, aka the Prince of Wales, and a large number of others including Lord Halifax.

You're correct. Someone needs to refresh his history, and I'll help you out.

The original reference above to members of Britain's Conservative Party being Nazi sympathizers implied that Neville Chamberlain was one. He was not, and I suggested that in this regard the author had him confused with Lord Halifax who was more sympathetic to Hitler and his ideas. After becoming Prime Minister, Hitler invited Chamberlain to be in his cabinet.

...the former King, aka the Prince of Wales,...

By just saying "the former King" it suggests you lack specific information about him. He was Edward VIII who became king in 1936 only to abdicate in December 1937. The "aka the Prince of Wales" is an odd application. The title of Prince of Wales applies by custom to the eldest son of the king, not the king himself. Perhaps what you meant was "Duke of Windsor" which was the title given Edward after his abdication and by which he is better known, but then again the concomitant "aka" would still have been inappropriate. Churchill and others became concerned with the Duke of Windsor's association with Nazis and some of his comments during the war, and the Duke was exiled for all practical purposes to become governor of the Bahamas where he could be watched and kept out of trouble. Some people have the opinion that if he had not been a member of the British Royal Family, the Duke of Windsor would have been tried for treason.

After becoming Prime Minister, Hitler invited Chamberlain to be in his cabinet.

Oooops!! That should have been "Churchill invited Chamberlain."

Sfter becoming Prime Minister, (Churchill) invited Chamberlain to be in his cabinet.

Churchill also invited Lord Halifax to remain he as foreign secretary as well, which he did. He was later named the British ambassador to the United States. What is your point?

Duke of Windsor"

You are right, I did mean the Duke of Windsor.

The original reference above to members of Britain's Conservative Party being Nazi sympathizers implied that Neville Chamberlain was one.

Whatever Chamberlain's own views, he appointed Halifax as his foreign secretary. The policy of appeasement reflected the view that Hitler and a resurgent Germany were a bulwark against Soviet communism. That was the dominant view of the conservative government which is why Halifax was made foreign secretary by Chamberlain. It was Churchill's vociferous dissent that left him in exile from the Conservative government during the 1930's.

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